Israeli Jets, Helicopters and Ground Forces Attack Baalbek, Hezbollah Hub in Bekaa Valley
It sounded like a storm, a cacophony of roaring jets and thudding helicopters moving ever closer to this ancient town in the Bekaa Valley on Tuesday night, warning that something very big was happening.
By 10:30 p.m., the Israeli attack on the city had started, with warplanes screaming in from every direction, said Mayor Muhsin al-Jammal of Baalbek.
“When we heard so many planes up there, I knew what was coming would be terrifying,” he said early Wednesday during a brief respite.
While the bombardment continued from the sky throughout the night and early morning, sparing few neighborhoods here, the offensive took on a second phase when Israeli soldiers began entering. One group came to an Iranian-financed hospital just outside of town, and a second group of soldiers came to Asaliya, an adjoining town, where they searched door to door and detained five people suspected of being Hezbollah members.
In peacetime, Baalbek is best known for its Roman ruins and its summer festivals. But in war, it is a prime target, a strategic center for Hezbollah in the Bekaa Valley.
Seven people, including two children, were killed when Israeli planes bombed a house in Jamaliye, a few miles outside Baalbek. In the house were about 50 members of an extended family who had fled the house when the jets were flying over. After the family returned, a rocket landed in the garden, one relative said.
“I saw the rocket, with its tail on fire, coming at us, and there was nothing I could do,” Ali Saeed, the relative, said. “The planes must have seen people moving around and assumed we were a target.”
In Baalbek, the main fighting started late Tuesday at the Dar el-Hekma hospital, run by the Imam Khomeini Islamic Charity Foundation, an Iranian foundation. Helicopters attacked the area, and then dropped about 20 Israeli soldiers. A fierce exchange broke out when a handful of Hezbollah fighters tried to keep the Israelis from entering the walled grounds.
“The helicopters came low and hit all around the hospital, and when they saw limited resistance they landed,” said a man at the scene who would only give his name as Ali.
The Israelis entered the hospital and were starting to leave when a larger force of Hezbollah fighters showed up and started a heavy firefight. Ali and his friends said that three fighters had been killed in the hospital battle, but a spokesman for the Israeli military said soldiers had killed at least 10 fighters there.
Ali was still sweaty and shaken on Wednesday as he talked about the fight. Though he dodged questions about his role, there were signs that he had been involved. His head was scratched and bruised, and several machine guns lay in the car he had pulled up in with two other young men. He walked around the hospital and grounds, working to clear traces of the battle. “They hit a civilian institution, and there was no one even inside it,” he insisted.
The men said cars belonging to Sheik Muhammad Yazbek, the personal representative of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and a member of Hezbollah Council, had come in and out of the parking lot that evening, though the sheik himself did not come, the men said. They said they believed he was the ultimate target of the raid.
By midday Wednesday, traces of the damage outside the gates of the hospital remained despite efforts to conceal them. Two burned cars remained in the parking lot after the fires had been put out, and a Peugeot pickup truck riddled with bullets was parked nearby, but piles of glass and other debris scattered throughout the parking lot suggested that several other cars had also been damaged.
At the gate, a sign announcing the opening hours of the hospital appeared to have been hastily nailed up to hide pockmarks from the attack. Pins pulled from hand grenades and many pieces of shrapnel, bullet shells and even the tail of a rocket hinted at how heavy the firefight was the night before.
Inside, the hospital had been virtually ransacked. Broken glass covered the floors at the main entrance, and black spots marked where stun grenades had been set off, in some cases searing Hebrew lettering into the floor. Doors into every room had been kicked in or blown open.
In one room, a huge magnetic resonance imaging machine had been twisted, and furniture had been overturned in almost every room.
On the first floor, nearly all the rooms had cots, suggesting that men had been sleeping there. Computers were ripped apart, their hard drives missing.
Then, early Wednesday, Israeli helicopters landed in Asaliya, about eight miles away, where soldiers searched house to house, residents and Israeli officials said. The soldiers detained five men, including two members of the Bura family and a member of the Gauta family, Mr. Jammal, the mayor of Baalbek, said.
Capt. Jacob Dallal, a spokesman for the Israeli Defense Forces, said soldiers had searched five houses and taken specific suspects into custody. But Mr. Jammal said the soldiers had taken only civilians, including a 15-year-old boy who was released when soldiers detained his grandfather instead.
“It was clear, they hadn’t managed to win a victory in the south, so they had to come here thinking they could hit the tail of the lion,” Mr. Jammal said. “They’re trying to show that they are doing something and can actually hit Hezbollah in their home.”
Fonte: By Hassan M. Fattah – The New York Times: Aug. 3, 2006